To The End -- Pilgrimage
by War1ord
Summary: A young quarian leaves the fleet to explore the galaxy and runs into more trouble than expected.


**A/N so many ideas for this yet I get stuck with the start of it. This is a restart of my first attempt at a fanfic, I ended up going off the chapter plan completely and I never liked what I had. Please tell me what you think of this chapter and what I can improve on.**

** Constructive criticism is welcome, straight up hate isn't.**

- Family -

Athena'Hamnet was on the engineering deck of the Garret, A Turian designed cruiser which the fleet had been given as a pilgrimage gift which now held several hundred quarians aboard.

The engineering deck was small and cluttered with wires running along the floor thanks to the constant repairs needed to keep the ship space worthy.

A light switched to red on her console meaning another system had failed, no doubt due to the ship being just under one hundred years old.

She sighed and spoke up, "Waylon cover for me, I need to go make a repair to the system on level 3."

"Of course Athena, ill cover for you so you can spend more time with that husband and child of yours." The sarcasm and venom dripping from his voice. "It's bad enough you got given leave for a month, now you take every excuse to leave."

"Talk to me like that again and you'll be handling the maintenance logs for the next week, since you don't want me slacking you can go fix the system on level 3. There's a nice little crawl space for you that you'll need to go through to reach it though."

"Fine, go fix the system yourself, you could of made your point without calling me fat though." He replies as he went out the door."

"Now where's the fun in that?" Athena shouted back nearly tripping over a thick cable that snaked across the floor in front of her.

_I really need to get around to getting these wires off of the walkways._

She headed to the elevator and pressed the button for deck 3 and waited.

_Hopefully Ramiel will be able to deflect Myron's questions without me, 5 years old and already questioning the way we live. The captain will be glad to see him go._

The door opened revealing one of the few corridors that the occupants of the ship could relax with friends and family freely. If you managed to get a booking, two or three dozen tables for hundreds meant that the place was normally fully booked ahead of time for a good few months.

The wall at the opposite side of the elevator was glass which looked onto the fleet and the vast emptiness of space.

She spotted the crawl space where the fault was coming from and headed towards it, narrowly avoiding another quarian who was walking in the opposite direction.

She lifted the hatch and looked into the dimly lit space she would be spending the next few hours repairing something that could easily be fixed with a new part, as if the fleet had any of those around the place.

She tried to get comfy as she set upon fixing the wires that had fried.

* * *

On the other side of the station a male quarian tended to a curious five year old who had questioned every aspect of quarian life several times over as his father struggled to keep up with the questions.

The room they were in was a six foot by six foot cube with a bathroom attached and a plastic bubble surrounding the room and its current occupants. The rest of the space had been converted into a makeshift decontamination chamber to keep the bacteria that was inside the bubble to a minimum.

The room was lightly furnished with a bed at one end and a desk with an old fashioned computer sitting on it at the other. Frames that held artwork were on one of the walls.

"Dad, when do I get my suit?" The small quarian asked.

"On your thirteenth birthday, the same answer I gave you the last time you asked." Ramiel replied getting slightly irritated at the constant barrage of questions.

"What does the suit do?"

Ramiel let out a sigh before answering, "To put it simply it keeps us safe."

"How do we touch things?"

"The suit can simulate the feeling of touching something but we don't actually touch things."

"What happens if you get fat and can't fit into the suit?"

"I don't think we can get fat, the suit monitors things like our weight and keeps us from growing hair among other things."

"Waylon's fat though"

"You can enable and disable features of the suit if you want, Waylon obviously disabled the weight control option for some reason."

"I don't wanna lose my hair"

"It's optional but it's much simpler without it."

"When's mummy going to get here?"

"In a few hours, we still have to work you know."

"Why does..."

"I think that's enough questions for now, want to play a game on the extranet?" Cutting the question off before he could ask.

"Ok daddy." Replied Myron as he went to sit at the computer with his dad.

* * *

Athena had finished the repairs and was making her way up the ladder to the exit, unknown to those above her she was listening to the pieces of conversation that reached her. As she reached the ladder she heard some marines above her.

"I heard we're going on another salvage run then? Must be dangerous if their trying to get Ramiel away from his family for it."

"It's a simple mission; the only problem is it's inside the veil."

"Makes sense why they're sending the best in then."

She opened the hatch and instead of heading to engineering went to the crew quarters, or rather what passed as them.

The storage bay had been converted into small cubicles which were then stacked onto one another so that as many quarians as possible were able to sleep in the small area.

Because of the way the captain designed it, it went from the youngest at one end to the oldest at the other with all the ages in between also in order.

Because of this design the cubicle she needed to get to was on the other side of the bay.

_Ramiel's going to have a lot of explaining to do when I find him._

She saw Ramiel leaving their child's room, looking down the corridor and he spotted her before quickly heading in the opposite direction.

She broke into a quick jog and quickly caught up with him.

"What is this I've been hearing about you going on a mission into Geth space? Explain yourself Ramiel!" demanding an answer from him.

"I, I was going to tell you but.. But I was waiting for a better chance to tell you."

"Don't pretend Ramiel" she replied angrily, "the first I would have heard of it is when you got onto the shuttle to leave on the mission!"

"I know I should have told you, I just never wanted to be the cause of your worrying."

"You would of caused us more worry by just disappearing on a mission!" The anger leaving her voice as she realised he had held her best interests at heart. "You should of just told us." Sadness now creeping into her voice.

He pulled her into an embrace and whispered soothing words into her ear as she started crying.

"Of course you would be here and I expected you to actually spend time helping chief engineer."

The words along with the venom of the person who delivered them brought her back from the comforting form of her husband.

"Maybe if someone is crazy enough to start a family with you then maybe then you would understand you Bosh'tet." Trying her best to fight the urge to hit him she questioned him. "Keelah, who's in engineering if you're here?"

"Seeing as you never noticed our shift just ended, you missed most of it as always."

"Ignore him and let's go see Myron" Ramiel whispered into her ear.

"As much as I would like to punch him, Myron is more important than him. Waylon go back to that hole you call a home" She replied as he took her with him to Myron's room.

They stood in the decontamination chamber as Myron waited impatiently armed with a series of questions to ask his parents.

* * *

-The suit-

Myron waited in his room with his father at his side waiting for his mum to arrive with his suit. Today he had turned 13 and was old enough to receive his first suit.

His usual calm expression was today replaced with excitement at the chance to finally explore the ship that he would soon know as home.

"So dad, will my suit look like yours or mothers?" he spoke up to break the silence that had descended on the room.

"It will most likely be like mine, male and female suits are made by different groups here on the fleet which is why they are different and why we've had to wait so long."

"That makes sense if they need to get the suit from another ship. What does our ship do for the fleet?"

"Ours is for people to live either before they leave on the pilgrimage or marines who have been injured in combat and can't work. The ship still has a crew that works here which is why me and your mother are here."

The beeping sound that came from the doorway told him that his mother had arrived with his suit. The thing that would keep him safe yet keep him from fully experiencing the galaxy completely.

"Now if you have any more questions be sure to ask your mum, I'm sure she'll be able to tell you more about your new suit than me." His eyes light up which meant that he was grinning underneath his visor.

"I'm sure my mother would be happy with that" he replied, grinning himself at how his constant barrage of questions wore him down.

"Ha, at this rate you should be on the admiralty board, they might realise the mistakes in the few decisions they do make."

"Nice to see you two passing judgement on the fleet, now are you going to keep talking or are you going to try on your new suit?" his mother interrupted the conversation he had started with his father.

"With that I'll be waiting outside with your mum to give you some privacy. Please tell us when you're about to put on your helmet and visor though."

"Ok dad, Now I just need to figure out how to put this on." He replied as he stared at the pieces of the suit inside the crate.

He lifted out the chest piece, noting the dark red of the fabric that was attached to it, it looked like his fathers except the wires that ran from the helmet into the back of the chest piece his were hidden within the suit itself.

The lower part was simple enough, it was the same as a pair of trousers, the colour changing between the same red as the chest piece on the fabric and the black material the suit itself was make from.

The arms and gloves were of the same design as the rest of the suit. The helmet was like his mothers with the wires that were hidden by her hood exposed at the back and which connected to the chest piece and ran down the back of it. The visor itself was the same dark red as the rest of the fabric.

He put it on carefully piece by piece and called his parents before he put the helmet on.

"So, what do you think?" He asked them brightly as they walked back into the small room.

"It looks wonderful on you, now how about you put on the helmet now?" A small twang of loss crept into her voice at the end of her sentence.

"Since I can't take this off again, this, this would be the last time you'll be able to see my face…" He said as he realised why his parents were upset.

"I'm afraid so" His father told him grimly, "The curse of survival I'm afraid."

"I, I never knew this would upset you so much. I was.. I was too excited about being able to leave this room that I wasn't thinking about you."

"Don't, the fleet has enough self-sacrificing people on it already. It should us apologising for spoiling your day."

"But mother…"

"No buts, now you go off and explore the ship, I'm sure you've been looking forward to."

"I forgot about that." He quickly finished putting the visor and helmet on and gave his mum and dad a hug before leaving to explore the rest of the ship.

For the next few hours Myron explored the ship asking questions about it to anyone who had the time to answer them. During his exploration he came across the captain of the ship. An old quarian who demanded authority and wasn't use to having his every move questioned.

He grew annoyed with Myron and handed out a punishment to Myron who then walked away to go explore another part of the ship, the captain shouting at him as he did so.


End file.
